Collected English Papers of Wolfgang Giegerich – serie

The fundamental importance of Christianity for Jung is well documented in his writings and letters. For the whole of his long career the great psychologist had wrestled with what he called " ... the great snake of the centuries. the burden of the human mind. the problem of Christianity." By comparison, his statements about Hegel are quite scarce. Both topics, nevertheless, have in common that they elicited from Jung radical accusations, accusations not presented in the calm tone of a psychological scholar but fired by a deep-seated personal affect that propelled Jung to wish "to dream the myth onwards," that is, to move to a new, his own improved and corrected version of Christianity. Rather than merely portraying and elucidating Jung’s views, this volume critically examines his theses and arguments by means of a series of close readings and by confronting his claims with the texts on which his interpretations are based. The guiding principle, in the spirit of which the author’s investigation is conducted, is the question of the needs of the soul and the standards of true psychology. While constantly bearing these needs and standards in mind, diverse topics are discussed in depth: Jung’s interpretation of a dream he had had about being unable to completely bow down before "the highest presence," his thesis concerning the patriarchal neglect of the feminine principle, his views about the alleged one-sidedness of Christianity, the "recalcitrant Fourth" and the "reality of Evil," his understanding of the Trinity and the spirit, his rejection of Hegel and of speculative thought, and his reaction to the modern "doubt that has killed" religious faith. A companion to the preceding volume, The Flight into the Unconscious, the essays collected here continue its radical critique of Jung’s psychology project, yielding not only deep insights into Jung’s personal religiosity and into what ultimately drove his psychology project as a whole, but granting as well a more sophisticated understanding of the psychological potential and telos of the Christian idea.

The fundamental importance of Christianity for Jung is well documented in his writings and letters. For the whole of his long career the great psychologist had wrestled with what he called " ... the great snake of the centuries. the burden of the human mind. the problem of Christianity." By comparison, his statements about Hegel are quite scarce. Both topics, nevertheless, have in common that they elicited from Jung radical accusations, accusations not presented in the calm tone of a psychological scholar but fired by a deep-seated personal affect that propelled Jung to wish "to dream the myth onwards," that is, to move to a new, his own improved and corrected version of Christianity. Rather than merely portraying and elucidating Jung’s views, this volume critically examines his theses and arguments by means of a series of close readings and by confronting his claims with the texts on which his interpretations are based. The guiding principle, in the spirit of which the author’s investigation is conducted, is the question of the needs of the soul and the standards of true psychology. While constantly bearing these needs and standards in mind, diverse topics are discussed in depth: Jung’s interpretation of a dream he had had about being unable to completely bow down before "the highest presence," his thesis concerning the patriarchal neglect of the feminine principle, his views about the alleged one-sidedness of Christianity, the "recalcitrant Fourth" and the "reality of Evil," his understanding of the Trinity and the spirit, his rejection of Hegel and of speculative thought, and his reaction to the modern "doubt that has killed" religious faith. A companion to the preceding volume, The Flight into the Unconscious, the essays collected here continue its radical critique of Jung’s psychology project, yielding not only deep insights into Jung’s personal religiosity and into what ultimately drove his psychology project as a whole, but granting as well a more sophisticated understanding of the psychological potential and telos of the Christian idea.

Psychological analysis usually sets its sights upon the patient or upon cultural phenomena such as myths, literature, or works of art. The essays in this volume, by contrast, have another addressee, another subject matter: psychology itself. Deeply informed by Jung’s insight regarding the discipline’s lack of an objective vantage point outside and beyond the psyche, their Jungian author again and again turns Jung’s contribution to psychology around upon itself in the spirit of an immanent critique. Cutting to the quick, the question is put: in its constitution as psychology is Jungian psychology up to the level of what its insight into psychology’s lack of an Archimedean point would require? Are the interpretations it gives of its various subject matters—alchemy, religion, the unconscious and the rest-matched by its interpretation of itself? Has its meeting itself in them had consequences for itself, consequences in terms of the fathoming of its own truth? Or clinging to the standpoint of empirical observer, did it ultimately demur with regards to the question of their truth and its own - this despite Jung’s having characterized his work as an opus divinum? Topics include Jung’s psychology project as a response to the condition of the world, the "smuggling" inherent in the logic of "the unconscious," the closure and setting free dialectic of alchemy and psychology, the blindness to logical form problematic, the faultiness of the opposition "Individual" and "Collective", Jung’s communion fiasco, his thinking the thought of not-thinking, the veracity of his Red Book, the disenchantment complex, and, as indicated in the title of this volume, Jung’s psychology project as a counter-speculative "flight into the unconscious."

Psychological analysis usually sets its sights upon the patient or upon cultural phenomena such as myths, literature, or works of art. The essays in this volume, by contrast, have another addressee, another subject matter: psychology itself. Deeply informed by Jung’s insight regarding the discipline’s lack of an objective vantage point outside and beyond the psyche, their Jungian author again and again turns Jung’s contribution to psychology around upon itself in the spirit of an immanent critique. Cutting to the quick, the question is put: in its constitution as psychology is Jungian psychology up to the level of what its insight into psychology’s lack of an Archimedean point would require? Are the interpretations it gives of its various subject matters—alchemy, religion, the unconscious and the rest-matched by its interpretation of itself? Has its meeting itself in them had consequences for itself, consequences in terms of the fathoming of its own truth? Or clinging to the standpoint of empirical observer, did it ultimately demur with regards to the question of their truth and its own - this despite Jung’s having characterized his work as an opus divinum? Topics include Jung’s psychology project as a response to the condition of the world, the "smuggling" inherent in the logic of "the unconscious," the closure and setting free dialectic of alchemy and psychology, the blindness to logical form problematic, the faultiness of the opposition "Individual" and "Collective", Jung’s communion fiasco, his thinking the thought of not-thinking, the veracity of his Red Book, the disenchantment complex, and, as indicated in the title of this volume, Jung’s psychology project as a counter-speculative "flight into the unconscious."

C. G. Jung regarded the soul to be a reality in its own right which reflects itself in all manner of images and events. symbols and traditions. In this fourth volume of his Collected English Papers, Giegerich recalls the soul to the inwardness of its own home territory by bringing out the thought-character of the self-creating, self-unfolding logical life that it is. In addition to clarifying what thought means for psychology and analyzing certain misconceptions surrounding the topic of "soul and thought" a challenging thesis concerning the limitation of an imaginal, "anima-only" approach in psychology (given the essential historicity of the soul) is carefully argued, while examining at the same time such topics as "the end of meaning and the birth of man," "anima mundi and time", "the metamorphosis of the gods," and the logical steps involved in the transition from childhood to adulthood and from a psychological oneness with nature to modern alienation from nature. The book also discusses the notion of the soul’s logical life and shows in action the psychological procedure of "absolute-negative interiorization" of phenomena into their soul and truth in a number of in-depth examinations of particular phenomena (e.g. Heraclitus’ dictum about the soul’s depth, the "leap into the solid stone," the negativity of the "stone which is not a stone"). In thorough-going critical engagements with other authors in the field, it demonstrates specific instances where psychology fails to do its job due to faulty presuppositions, above all psychology’s failure to face the modern world. It emphasizes the active role of the mind in soul-making as the making of psychic reality. It addresses the questions of the future of psychology and whether progress in psychology is possible.

C. G. Jung regarded the soul to be a reality in its own right which reflects itself in all manner of images and events. symbols and traditions. In this fourth volume of his Collected English Papers, Giegerich recalls the soul to the inwardness of its own home territory by bringing out the thought-character of the self-creating, self-unfolding logical life that it is. In addition to clarifying what thought means for psychology and analyzing certain misconceptions surrounding the topic of "soul and thought" a challenging thesis concerning the limitation of an imaginal, "anima-only" approach in psychology (given the essential historicity of the soul) is carefully argued, while examining at the same time such topics as "the end of meaning and the birth of man," "anima mundi and time", "the metamorphosis of the gods," and the logical steps involved in the transition from childhood to adulthood and from a psychological oneness with nature to modern alienation from nature. The book also discusses the notion of the soul’s logical life and shows in action the psychological procedure of "absolute-negative interiorization" of phenomena into their soul and truth in a number of in-depth examinations of particular phenomena (e.g. Heraclitus’ dictum about the soul’s depth, the "leap into the solid stone," the negativity of the "stone which is not a stone"). In thorough-going critical engagements with other authors in the field, it demonstrates specific instances where psychology fails to do its job due to faulty presuppositions, above all psychology’s failure to face the modern world. It emphasizes the active role of the mind in soul-making as the making of psychic reality. It addresses the questions of the future of psychology and whether progress in psychology is possible.

"All steps forward in the improvement of the human psyche have been paid for by blood." Further to this statement from C. G. Jung, Wolfgang Giegerich’s third volume of Collected English Papers shows that the soul is not merely the innocent recipient or victim of violence: it also produces itself through violent deeds and expresses itself through violent acts. Beginning in primordial times with the ritual spilling of blood in animal and human sacrifice, a light was kindled within the darkness of what would otherwise have been mere biological existence, the light of consciousness, mindedness, and "the soul." And following upon this, in the clearance thus created, the soul attained new statuses of itself on the historic battlefields of war and revolution. First-order killings gave way to second-order killings, the killings of metaphysics and philosophy. Turning around upon itself (even as it violently engaged those adversarial others through whom its self-relation was mediated) the soul learned to self-critically cut into itself. It was in this way, as the inwardness of the blood that was paid out for it, that psychology emerged. Topics include ritual slaughter as primordial soul-making, shadow integration and the rise of psychology, blood-brotherhood and blood-revenge, the alchemy of history, Kafka’s "In the Penal Colony," child sacrifice, Islamic terrorism, and the animus as negation with special reference to Bluebeard.

"All steps forward in the improvement of the human psyche have been paid for by blood." Further to this statement from C. G. Jung, Wolfgang Giegerich’s third volume of Collected English Papers shows that the soul is not merely the innocent recipient or victim of violence: it also produces itself through violent deeds and expresses itself through violent acts. Beginning in primordial times with the ritual spilling of blood in animal and human sacrifice, a light was kindled within the darkness of what would otherwise have been mere biological existence, the light of consciousness, mindedness, and "the soul." And following upon this, in the clearance thus created, the soul attained new statuses of itself on the historic battlefields of war and revolution. First-order killings gave way to second-order killings, the killings of metaphysics and philosophy. Turning around upon itself (even as it violently engaged those adversarial others through whom its self-relation was mediated) the soul learned to self-critically cut into itself. It was in this way, as the inwardness of the blood that was paid out for it, that psychology emerged. Topics include ritual slaughter as primordial soul-making, shadow integration and the rise of psychology, blood-brotherhood and blood-revenge, the alchemy of history, Kafka’s "In the Penal Colony," child sacrifice, Islamic terrorism, and the animus as negation with special reference to Bluebeard.

C. G. Jung famously declared that it is not the psyche that is in us, but rather we who are in the psyche. Updating this insight, the second volume of Wolfgang Giegerich’s Collected English Papers examines what must be regarded as the most all-encompassing presence of our lives today: technological civilization. Living within technology, we now find that what we had formerly regarded as psychological phenomena—our feelings and emotions, images and dreams—have been superseded by phenomena bearing the predicates "artificial," "manufactured," and "virtual." Television, the World Wide Web, and the nuclear bomb are cases in point. Far from being mere things among things, each of these has transformed the whole of man’s world-relation. Though deplored by many as soulless on this account, these phenomena, it may be argued, are the real gods, the real archetypes, of the soul today. Psychologically it is not what we think and feel about them that counts, but what they think, what they feel.

C. G. Jung famously declared that it is not the psyche that is in us, but rather we who are in the psyche. Updating this insight, the second volume of Wolfgang Giegerich’s Collected English Papers examines what must be regarded as the most all-encompassing presence of our lives today: technological civilization. Living within technology, we now find that what we had formerly regarded as psychological phenomena—our feelings and emotions, images and dreams—have been superseded by phenomena bearing the predicates "artificial," "manufactured," and "virtual." Television, the World Wide Web, and the nuclear bomb are cases in point. Far from being mere things among things, each of these has transformed the whole of man’s world-relation. Though deplored by many as soulless on this account, these phenomena, it may be argued, are the real gods, the real archetypes, of the soul today. Psychologically it is not what we think and feel about them that counts, but what they think, what they feel.

This first volume of The Collected English Papers of Wolfgang Giegerich takes its title from Giegerich's ground-breaking paper, On the Neurosis of Psychology, or The Third of the Two, originally published in Spring Journal in 1977. The third referred to in the title is psychology itself as the theory in which the two, patient and analyst, are contained as they engage with one another in the analytic process. By applying to psychology itself the ideas that analytical psychology draws upon when thinking about the patient, Giegerich establishes the basis for a psychology that defines itself as the discipline of interiority. Topics include Neumann's history of consciousness, Jung's thought of the self, the question of a Jungian identity, projection, the origin of psychology, and more.

This first volume of The Collected English Papers of Wolfgang Giegerich takes its title from Giegerich's ground-breaking paper, On the Neurosis of Psychology, or The Third of the Two, originally published in Spring Journal in 1977. The third referred to in the title is psychology itself as the theory in which the two, patient and analyst, are contained as they engage with one another in the analytic process. By applying to psychology itself the ideas that analytical psychology draws upon when thinking about the patient, Giegerich establishes the basis for a psychology that defines itself as the discipline of interiority. Topics include Neumann's history of consciousness, Jung's thought of the self, the question of a Jungian identity, projection, the origin of psychology, and more.

This book discusses the psychological understanding of, and approach to, various central questions and aspects of psychological reality, in each case critically examining under what conditions one’s interpretation qualifies as 'truly psychological', i.e. fulfilling the criteria of a rigorous notion of psychology in the Jungian tradition.Providing groundbreaking new insights into psychological theory, Giegerich explores many different topics such as the origin of the notion of the soul (psychē), the rise of monotheism, the psychological significance of Christianity in Western history, the inner, above all tautegorical structure of myth and the soul’s relation to external reality, amongst others. Sometimes surprising and at times challenging, but always concretely based and carefully explained and argued, this book will provide readers with an accessible demonstration of the methodological stance of psychology as the discipline of interiority.This will be of great interest to the Jungian community, psychotherapists and psychoanalysts training in Jungian theory and practice, as well as those interested in psychological, theological and philosophical issues.

This book discusses the psychological understanding of, and approach to, various central questions and aspects of psychological reality, in each case critically examining under what conditions one’s interpretation qualifies as 'truly psychological', i.e. fulfilling the criteria of a rigorous notion of psychology in the Jungian tradition.Providing groundbreaking new insights into psychological theory, Giegerich explores many different topics such as the origin of the notion of the soul (psychē), the rise of monotheism, the psychological significance of Christianity in Western history, the inner, above all tautegorical structure of myth and the soul’s relation to external reality, amongst others. Sometimes surprising and at times challenging, but always concretely based and carefully explained and argued, this book will provide readers with an accessible demonstration of the methodological stance of psychology as the discipline of interiority.This will be of great interest to the Jungian community, psychotherapists and psychoanalysts training in Jungian theory and practice, as well as those interested in psychological, theological and philosophical issues.

A big problem of psychology in the tradition of C.G. Jung is that many concepts and orientations are being used by its adherents that are not really compatible with a true psychology because they have their home ground in other orientations.It is essential for psychology that its views and concepts are ultimately derived from a rigorous notion of psychology and from the concept of its key metaphor, soul. This book diligently examines a host of diverse psychological stances and concepts using this insight as its compass. Beginning with a thorough elucidation of the unique foundational orientation of Jung’s psychology as an additional crucial guidepost and then exploring the lasting significance of James Hillman’s achievement in the field of psychology, it goes on to engage with works from psychologists such as Robert Romanyshyn, Mark Saban, and Stanton Marlan. By reviewing the various theses presented, examples being that synchronicity could be a gate to meaning, that one’s anxiety could be a guide to psychological understanding, that there are absolutely unassimilable images, the emphasis is always on making the necessary distinctions and thereby training the mind in truly psychological thinking.This book will be of great interest to the Jungian community, psychotherapists and psychoanalysts training in Jungian theory and practice, and those interested in psychological, theological, and philosophical issues.